General Links of Interest

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Know the Facts on Publlic Unions

One of the saddest things in America today is how much of the country has been convinced that "there are two sides to every story, and everyone has their facts". In fact, every side has N sides and there is no shortage of "facts" to support nearly any world view. The primary questions in life are actually of the sort "faith, world view, ideology". Those are the questions that allow the selections of which facts we prioritize, and even more imporantly, what we DO as a result of the important input from reality provided by facts.

Even when the facts are scrupulously and fairly presented, many world views that are not in alingment with them will continue -- difficult facts will be ignored or minimized, old information will be used rather than new, rosy projections will be presented as reality -- standard stuff. The problem with this story is that most of the MSM is effectively lying:

Very few people are aware that Federal public unions do NOT have the collective bargaining right.

Very few people understand the power of a union in a monopoly where the money from the union influences the monopoly

I'd rather we started fixing the nation by dealing with entitlements, but we are broken in a lot of places. Educating Americans on what is wrong with public unions is critical, this article does a good job of starting that process:

Why? Because unlike in the private economy, a public union has a natural monopoly over government services. An industrial union will fight for a greater share of corporate profits, but it also knows that a business must make profits or it will move or shut down. The union chief for teachers, transit workers or firemen knows that the city is not going to close the schools, buses or firehouses.